The networked computing environment (e.g., cloud computing environment) is an enhancement to the predecessor grid environment, whereby multiple grids and other computation resources may be further enhanced by one or more additional abstraction layers (e.g., a cloud layer), thus making disparate devices appear to an end-consumer as a single pool of seamless resources. These resources may include such things as physical or logical computing engines, servers and devices, device memory, and storage devices, among others.
As consumers begin to utilize networked computing environments (e.g., cloud computing environments), these consumers may be presented with the need to provide information. For example, when provisioning a new virtual machine, a consumer/user may have to specify a name, user identification (ID), a password, a desired operating system, resource sizing, etc. This may be required multiple times for multiple deployments or to replace a previous deployment in a consistent way.
Even as computing environments have become more complex, the initial user experience often involves the use a graphical user interface (GUI) to navigate about the computing environment. However, challenges may exist in providing support for production level configuration and deployment activities due to the potentially error-prone nature of such interfaces. For example, a user/administrator is generally responsible for properly inputting correct configuration information into the interface. Since, such an interface may include multiple panels as well as option selections, multiple opportunities for the input of erroneous configuration information may exist.